cultural studies and historical approaches

The Elizabeth Bowen Review is an open access online journal, publishing essays on all aspects of Elizabeth Bowen’s work and life.  The Editors are now accepting submissions for Volume Eight. The focus for the volume is ‘Why Bowen Matters’, the title of the symposium organised by the Irish Writers’ Centre in June 2026, but essays on any area of her life and work will also be welcome. Completed essays should be submitted by 30th September 2026. Essays should be no more than 6,000 words in length excluding bibliography and footnotes, and use the Harvard referencing system. All essays are subject to double blind peer review.

"Making Trouble: Subversions and Reclamations in American Imaginaries"
RIAS Vol. 21, Fall-Winter (2/2028)

This issue of RIAS invites contributions on the theme of “Making Trouble: Subversions and Reclamations in American Imaginaries.” Engaging ongoing debates in global American Studies on power, representation, dissent, and cultural transformation, the issue seeks contributions that examine how American cultural, political, and social imaginaries are challenged, reworked, and reclaimed across diverse historical and geographical contexts. It invites interdisciplinary perspectives from the global field of American Studies and welcomes submissions from scholars worldwide.

“Science and Sensibility: Method Meets Art”
A Transdisciplinary Conference

Date: October 17-18, 2026
Location: University of Oxford, UK and online

Conference Webpage: https://labrc.co.uk/2026/06/15/science-and-sensibility-2026/

We invite original book chapter proposals for the upcoming edited volume“Emergence of New World Imagination in the 20th Century Asia:Understanding the Asian Colonial Countries through the Lens of Travelogues, Memoirs, Testimonies and Archival Documents" to be published with an International publishing house. This edited book aims to provide a multidisciplinary platform for advanced doctoral students, researchers, academicians and faculty members to publish their original works with us.

Brief Synopsis :

As the section editor for The Queer Experience, I invite you to submit a chapter proposal for consideration to be included in The American Research Handbook on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, an edited scholarly volume that examines the evolving role of diversity, equity, and inclusion within American democracy and educational institutions.

The Queer Experience Section Seeks:

• Well-researched and evidence-based analyses that examine gender identity, sexuality, intersectionality, and/or the evolving role(s) of queer people in society at the present moment.

This panel examines how Germans have claimed, imagined, and narrated the Pacific from the nineteenth century to the present. From the colonial administration of Samoa, New Guinea, and Micronesia to missionary encounters, ethnographic expeditions, settler migration along the Pacific coast, and contemporary literary reckonings with colonial pasts, German engagements with the Pacific raise questions about imperial ambition, cultural fantasy, and the politics of memory.

This panel explores archives beyond the traditional frame and instead as embodied spaces of cultural memory and histories inscribed on skin. Building upon Hortense Spillers’ important essay Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe (1987), we seek papers from humanities scholars in the French and Francophone worlds that reframe the body not as a passive victim but as a living text, a site of memory, and an alternative space that rescripts official records. By retracing histories through the reading of the body, we can activate affect, unleash unexpected memories, and create generative spaces for art that centres on cultural knowledge to empower communities.

CFP: Special Issue of The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture (15.2 2026) on K-Pop, deadline 15th June 2026.

IV. International Symposium on Clothing Culture in Social Sciences btw. 21.–23.10.2026 at the Marmara University, Istanbul

Planned as a continuation of the SOBİTÜRK Symposium, the SOBİTÜRK 2026 themed around Clothing Culture aims to examine the phenomenon of clothing from a multidisciplinary social sciences perspective. Among the primary objectives of the symposium are to investigate the transformations of clothing culture throughout cultural geography from past to present and to discuss the interaction between traditional clothing patterns and modern/global fashion understandings.

Drawing on the arpillera as both an aesthetic practice and a critical model, this seminar explores how 21st-century Latin American women’s writing can be read through constellations, transnational and uneven archives, and relational frameworks. Rather than organizing analysis along national or canonical lines, it approaches texts as dynamic assemblages that weave together bodies, territories, affects, and political histories.

Poetry & Poetry Studies at MAPACA 2026

November 5-7, 2026 at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, Baltimore, MD

Deadline: 6/30/2026

In the wake of ecocriticism and environmental humanities, the blue humanities have emerged as a field of study that emphasizes the centrality of aquatic environments in understanding interactions between humans and nonhumans. This interdisciplinary field, which initially grew out of Anglophone literary criticism, proposes to shift our terra-centric perspective by adopting the seas and oceans as a new vantage point to rethink our understanding of both the planet and literature (Klein, 2002; Blum, 2008; Bailyn, 2005). Originally developed in the United States within the field of Oceanic studies (Blum 2010; Cohen 2010; Mentz 2009), the “Blue studies” have since expanded and become increasingly decentered and diversified.

Soapbox 8.0: call for papers

Ways of Structuring

peer reviewed; open to critical and artistic work. 

If structures are determinate and determining, as they have come to seem through the interventions of poststructuralist theory, then ‘ways of structuring’ names a contradiction.  The plurality of ‘ways’ sits in tension with the fixity of ‘structure,’ evoking the very qualities of contingency and flexibility that the concept seems to negate.  For this upcoming issue, we welcome academic and artistic contributions that explore this tension.

Futures and Frontiers of US American Culture(s) International Conference

30 September – 2 October 2026

John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin

Keynotes: Jenny Stümer (Universität Heidelberg) | Dan Hassler-Forest (Utrecht University)

Acceptance/rejection will be communicated shortly after the extended deadline has passed.